Clothing+: Comfortable sensor systems become part of clothing

Clothing+ has studied the marriage of textiles and electronics for over 10 years. As a result of this development work, the world’s first heart rate monitoring belt made of textile was created in cooperation with Polar Elektro. Today, the company’s customers include the world’s leading companies specialising in human body measurement devices.

“The feedback for the heart rate monitoring belt was encouraging and also showed in increased sales. Last year, we manufactured more than 3 million belts, which is over a half of the heart rate belts manufactured around the world. Our customers include the world’s most notable electronics companies specialising in body measurement, such as Suunto, Garmin and Philips. In this cooperation model, our expertise lies in sensor technology and the integration of the sensors into textile”, says Akseli Reho, CEO of Clothing Plus Oy.

Comfort and ease above all

Heart rate monitoring belts made of textile have a host of benefits: adaptivity and flexibility are completely different from those of a plastic band. Measurement quality also improves as the skin contact in the measurement situation remains good and normal behaviour is not disturbed. The band is easy to clean as it can be washed in the washing machine.

“At the next stage, we will integrate sensors as parts of sports underwear from which the measurement data will be transferred directly to a mobile phone or a watch.”

Clothing+ focuses on sports and health care measurements

“Our sports business has grown by roughly 10–20 per cent and it composes over a half of our turnover. Underwear measurement opens the door for a huge leap and an expansion from sports measurement to health care measurements, which is a growing field. The growth of health care measurements is boosted by the ageing of the population and pursued cost savings”.

“We have participated in the Tekes GAP programme twice and both occurrences have proven extremely useful. With the recommendations from the programme, we have been able to rehabilitate our business and harmonise its course. Tekes has naturally had a major role in financing the development of the technical details of the technology we apply. This has enabled us to implement the projects more extensively and buy outsourced services more comprehensively than we would have without sharing the risks with Tekes”.